Tag: otome game

Villainess Reloaded Didn’t Blow ME Away, That’s for Sure!

by macksamson, posted in Light Novels, Other

Perhaps my least favorite subgenre of light novels—even more than the notorious isekai—is probably whatever you call “the main protagonist is suddenly inside a visual novel for no reason”. Events tend to happen exactly like in the game, so the main character ends up being more overpowered than any isekai protag simply by knowing the future and avoiding all the problems that they already knew about. More importantly, their appeal lies in a very neurotypical fascination with realistic human relationships, as well as for you to be easily invested in whether or not two fictional characters do it. I hated pretty much every single one of these I’ve ever tried to read… but one title by the author of Her Majesty’s Swarm, which I’m assuming got axed or J Novel-Club lost the licensing or something, caught my eye: Villainess Reloaded! Blowing Away Bad Ends with Modern Weapons.

In Villainess Reloaded!, a college student whose name is never mentioned is reborn in an otome name as its main antagonist: Astrid Sophia von Oldernberg. Despite having been forced to play it by a friend, she nonetheless got every ending, and knows that Astrid is fated to die. As such, she plans to use her military knowledge to create this game world’s equivalent to modern weapons.

The appeal of this is seeing a loli unloading an AK-47 on people with no remorse. Coming from the author of Her Majesty’s Swarm, this is no real surprise. Even at age four in the game, she wastes no time learning magic and producing her own guns. At age four. Here’s the thing, though; since guns weren’t invented yet, there are no gun laws in this game world! So, technically, what she’s doing is entirely legal. 

The immediate problems, however, rear their ugly heads right off the bat. For starters, she asks her father for permission on early magic lessons, and the way she convinces him isn’t by giving him a kiss on both cheeks, but by listing several sociopolitical reasons why it’s for his benefit, all while using words that a four-year-old couldn’t possibly know. Of course, this is a fantasy world with no regard for realism, so I could let that slide.

However, it doesn’t end there. When Astrid gets her magic tutor, he just nonchalantly teaches her subjects magic that only the most advanced wizards are supposed to learn. This includes blood magic, which is the equivalent of dark arts and something a child—in the context of this world—shouldn’t be allowed to learn. Being an LN protagonist, Astrid does all this pretty much perfectly. And the cherry on top is that everyone is just casually okay with it! Even when someone does show concern, it’s very swiftly swept aside.

This volume consists of the usual slice-of-life stuff that happens in pretty much every LN of this kind that I have read. It’s no different from those LNs except with the occasional use of guns. I guess this is supposed to be a slow burn, since the flash-forward prologue implies that Astrid gets three fairy familiars before wrecking stuff, and at this point she only has one.

The characters are pretty much the typical, grounded shoujo tropes you’d see in your garden variety visual novel. Astrid, despite being a sociopath, isn’t that fun to enjoy, even with her crazy monologuing. The others are, well, I don’t like them.

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Verdict: 5/10

Villainess Reloaded! did not at all get me to like this subgenre of light novel any better than before. It was boring and unremarkable, and the gun gimmick seemed like a marketing hook more than anything. I guess if you like romance and visual novels, then you’ll like this as well.

And with that, I kind of have some lousy news for my blog moving forward. For whatever reason, I’ve been very close to being in the red when it comes to my money. In fact, I can barely afford to buy the light novel volumes of the series I actually care about. So, for the time being, I will not cover any light novel debuts no matter what. This will last until I finish a good enough number of the ones I’ve been currently working on. Hopefully that’ll be sooner rather than later, since light novels are kind of what I started this blog on!

I’m In Love with a Villainess Killed My Love for Yuri (Volume 1 Review)

by macksamson, posted in Light Novels, Other

One genre I did not expect to consistently blow me away was yuri; a genre that mainly focuses on a romantic relationship between two women. I just kept getting bombarded by these super entertaining and engaging stories. Murcielago, Otherside Picnic, Sexiled, and ROLL OVER AND DIE! have been real pleasures. So when Seven Seas published their edition of I’m in Love With the Villainess, and it became a #1 bestseller on Amazon and BookWalker, I was excited. However, like with virtually all media I’ve consumed other than One Piece…

I CANNOT LIKE ANYTHING POPULAR.

In I’m in Love With the Villainess, a girl named Rae is transported into the setting of her favorite otome game, Revolution, with literally no explanation. She can date anyone she wants, but chooses the main antagonist, Claire Francois. Since Claire is a conceited noble girl, “tsundere” doesn’t even begin to describe her relationship with Rae.

From the first chapter, all the way to the end, I was flabbergasted. First off, the writing was abysmal. They don’t even go out of the way to describe the setting, not even in enough detail for you to get a sense of 3D space. Heck, I couldn’t even find a description of what Rae looked like; you literally have to take the part where it says Clair is blonde, and deduce that Rae has black hair by looking at the cover art and using the process of elimination! And despite being yuri, I felt no sexual tension between them, even when they’re naked.

And boy, the relationship between those girls was just lacking in… everything! Most of their interactions consist of Rae showering Claire with compliments, who responds by shouting witty comebacks. I understand that this comedic style is common in Japanese media, but it was so frequent that it literally felt like 19/20 of their interactions. Not even D-Frag!, which makes fun of it, was that bad.

The other bad thing was that the entirety of I’m in Love With the Villainess is Rae being in love with the villainess! “Well, duh,” you say, “it’s yuri.” No, you don’t understand. The other yuri I’ve read up to this point have something more. Murcielago had over-the-top gore and visual spectacle, Sexiled was crazy committed to Feminism, and both Otherside Picnic and ROLL OVER AND DIE! had high-tension suspense and action. Rae does kind of resort to tricks, like making up ghost stories just so Claire can cling to her, but compared to the sociopaths I’ve seen, that amounts to mere childish pranks. The only real scheme I could gather from I’m in Love With the Villainess was that Rae tries to build a ship between Clair and some guy. I’m anticipating that she’s doing this just to break them up, then swoop in and take Claire for herself while her guard is down. Even if that does happen down the road, it still leaves much to be desired compared to the other examples. 

Do I even need to discuss the characters? They’re all as flat as boards. Rae’s doting on Claire comes off as childish and annoying instead of seductive and sexy, plus she has no other personality quirks to speak of. Claire is just a boring tsundere; Rae even says that she never goes over-the-top. There’s also these three princely brothers, and why are they even in this LN at all?! This is yuri for crying out loud!

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Verdict: 5/10

I’m in Love With the Villainess is an empty husk of ideas, none of which are executed well. I am absolutely astounded that something like this has been so commercially successful compared to the other yuri series I mentioned. At this point, I have come to question the genre’s sense of quality. Was this series the exception, or the rule? In any case, just save yourself the pain and read any yuri series other than this one!

Deathbound Duke’s Daughter: Erika Aurelia and the Seafarer’s Ruins Review

by macksamson, posted in Deathbound Duke's Daughter, Light Novels

I have a confession to make: a couple of years ago, I read the first volume of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom, and wholly disliked it. Maybe it improves, but all I saw was a typical, slow-paced, “grounded and realistic” slice-of-life fantasy that tried to hide that fact with an interesting premise. “Now what does that have to do with the topic at hand?” you ask. Well, you’ll see when I describe the premise of Deathbound Duke’s Daughter, published in English by J-Novel Club.

Deathbound Duke’s Daughter is a blatant clone of My Next Life as a Villainess. An unnamed character, who was apparently murdered at her workplace, is reincarnated as Erika Aurelia, the antagonist of her favorite otome game, Liber Monstrorum. Erika has a red shirt on, and is destined to die at the very beginning of the game. With her wits, the new Erika might be able to reverse her fate.

The immediate difference with Deathbound and Villainess is the world that the “games” are set in. In Villainess, Katarina is harassed by the student body, or accosted by bandits or something (I actually forgot because, to reiterate, I didn’t exactly like that series). On the flipside, Liber Monstrum proves to be the Dark Souls of visual novels; there’s vampyres, werewolves, and all kinds of Lovecraftian horrors that await. 

This gives Deathbound a much more adventurous vibe than Villainess, which automatically makes it a great light novel for me (even though “objectively” it’s bad because it doesn’t involve solving personal, human issues *sarcasm*). It wastes no time diving into the titular Seafarer’s Ruins, where Erika must save some kids from being King Midas’d to death, and more importantly, saving herself by having their hypothetical dead spirits not curse her.

However, the characters- like many-an isekai- leave much to be desired. Erika, despite supposedly being evil, is just about as un-evil and plain ordinary as Katarina from Villainess. The other major characters include Claus and Anne Hafan. The former is a typical overpowered self-insert protagonist (but he’s not the MAIN protagonist, which makes him subversive! *sarcasm*), and Anne is just a boring moe blob.

The art for this novel series is great, especially the cover art. It has a very whimsical look. However, the interior illustrations look kind of weird to me. It’s probably because it’s shoujo-looking, and I find that artstyle to be weird in general.

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Verdict: 7.5/10

Deathbound Duke’s Daughter is definitely a better version of My Next Life as a Villainess. However, it’s not perfect. If it doesn’t grow some personality soon, then I’ll end up dropping it just as hard as I did its clone. For now, I recommend it to fans of Villainess, as well as Ascendance of a Bookworm and Mushoku Tensei.